[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] 286/16 with DRAM woes. Help, please.

loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Mike Loving) (10/27/90)

I have a 16mhz 286 machine which had 8 empty 256kx4 DRAM sockets (and
some 256kx1's for parity).  The rather thin manual on the mother board
said that to expand the RAM one just stuffs chips in there (that's the
way nearly every machine I've worked with recently works).  No switches,
no jumpers no nothing.

Well after buying 8 new chips (faster than the old ones) and putting them
in, the system boots but does not find the ram.  I exchanged the new chips
for the old ones (find out if new chips are functional) and system says
yup, 1 meg of ram, but putting in the old 8 as the second meg still results
in system not finding the the additional ram.

The mother board is made my a company called Inforteck (hong kong apparently)
and was sold to me by some folks who are no outta business.  The mother board
is a NEAT (chips and technology)  with Award BIOS.  I'd tell you other stuff
about the equipment, but it does not seem relevant.  The only other strange
thing I have found is that the extended CMOS set up is now flaky (locks up
when you try to change some things).

If there is ANYone out there, who knows more about these boards than me,
I would be VERY interested in hearing from you.  ALL suggestions, stupid
or smart, are welcome.

Mike Loving
loving@cs.ucla.edu

draper@buster.cps.msu.edu (Patrick J Draper) (10/28/90)

In article <40688@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Mike Loving) writes:
>I have a 16mhz 286 machine which had 8 empty 256kx4 DRAM sockets (and
>some 256kx1's for parity).  The rather thin manual on the mother board
>said that to expand the RAM one just stuffs chips in there (that's the
>way nearly every machine I've worked with recently works).  No switches,
>no jumpers no nothing.
>
>Well after buying 8 new chips (faster than the old ones) and putting them
>in, the system boots but does not find the ram.  I exchanged the new chips

Well what a coincidence.

I happened to upgrade my 386SX to 4MB a couple of days ago and had the
same problem with the same BIOS.

Install your memory as the manual says. Hold down the insert key as you
flip the power switch and wait for the thing to boot before you release
it.

That should clear the CMOS memory - not the disk setup stuff, but the
internal tables that the bios uses to determine what hardware it's
running on. You might need to run your setup program to get rid of a
checksum error, but that's normal after clearing CMOS.

Good luck,

Patrick Draper  -----   Michigan State University